


spring bound

by bell (bellaboo), bellaboo, usomitai (bellaboo)



Series: When He was a Girl AU [2]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bellaboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/usomitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson adjusts to his new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spring bound

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit is always welcome!

And it felt like a winter machine  
That you go through and then  
You catch your breath and winter starts again  
And everyone else is spring bound  
  
Dar Williams


  
Wilson feels ugly.

He feels ugly when he looks in the mirror, and he feels ugly when he doesn’t. He doesn’t know why. He looks exactly the same as six months ago: the same round face, the same large nose, the same thick eyebrows. His body, too, is the same.

He didn’t feel ugly _before_ the transformation.

His therapist asks him why he thinks he feels this way now. She’s younger than he is by almost twenty years and she smiles with a patience and an inner satisfaction Wilson has never had the pleasure of experiencing.

“I don’t know,” he says, watching melted snow slide down the window. It’s technically winter, but it’s a warm day. He still feels cold, all over. She asks him to think the subject over until their next session.

*

After visiting Richard for the first time, he took another big step: he cut his hair.

“It’s been a while,” his barber greeted. It’s been almost five months, since before the transformation. The barber never saw him as a woman, and Wilson was glad there was at least one person who didn’t stare at him. “And look at that hair! I thought you’d found someone else, but I guess not, if you let it get that long!”

The hair seemed longer when it was in pieces on the tiled floor.

When House saw Wilson’s new look, he frowned. “Unrepentant conformist.”

Wilson ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck, where his hair was uniformly stubbly.

*

He arranged it with Cuddy so that he would go on maternity leave-- her words-- after Richard gets out of the NICU. He is grateful. He can be near her and can drop by whenever he has a free moment, and he is within sprinting distance should she have an emergency.

And by staying at work, Wilson can throw himself into his job. He can blame his ever-present exhaustion on overworking. After his long hours at the hospital, he drives home between mounds of late April grey, grimy snow.

*

Wilson doesn’t know what to do around Richard. He ends up sitting down and staring. His therapist, upon hearing this, suggests Wilson try doing small tasks usually left to the nurses: washing her or cleaning out her mouth or changing her clothes.

Wilson feels like an idiot. Of course. He’s given that advice before, as a doctor and has seen parents do so. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He shouldn’t have to be told these things. Being a good parent should be instinctual.

“Or,” his therapist continues, “If that’s too intimidating right now, you could start out smaller, by just touching, massaging her. It’d be good for the both of you.”

Wilson heads straight for the NICU after that session and tries it out: rubbing slow, rhythmic circles on her torso. He doesn’t know what he expected. Maybe he’d hoped for an instant connection, with this thing that is meant to be his daughter. But Richard doesn’t react except by squirming and Wilson feels nothing beyond pity.

*

When Wilson returns to work, he takes up eating lunch every day with House again. It never ceases to amaze him how, no matter what fights they go through, they can still return to this banal practice, like nothing has changed.

On the first day that they took up again this ritual again, House was going through a plate of fries (which he himself bought, since Wilson is on a healthier diet; supposedly it’ll help lessen the depression) and hashing out his latest case. “Foreman thinks it’s genetic, but--“

House’s gaze flickered and focused elsewhere. Wilson turned to see what had captured his attention: a group of chattering nurses. One of them was quite attractive, if you were into brunettes, curved bodies, and breasts. Wilson knew for a fact that House was _very_ into such virtues.

Wilson pulled his elbows towards his body and hunched his shoulders.

*

Cuddy cups her mug of coffee and the steam rises before her face. “But what did you expect, Wilson?”

He holds his own mug in his lap. It keeps him warm. He’s been feeling so cold, lately. “Didn’t think about it much, I guess. Thought that once I was a guy again, it’d all be solved.”

A few weeks after the birth, Wilson was overtaken by the sudden need to decorate his new apartment. In one weekend he splurged thousands of dollars to get the perfect look: wooden antique furniture, inoffensive modern art, and plain white curtains. He had the nursery painted pink and filled it with images and objects representing soft, primary-colored animals. Upon seeing the room, Cuddy had verbally approved, but Wilson hadn’t missed her wistfulness.

Seeing Cuddy sitting at his new table, the curls of her black hair and colorful blouse contrasting against the white curtains behind her, as beautiful and classic as a model out of a forties’ advertisement, Wilson is certain that he decorated the apartment well. He is not so certain it is the right look for him.

“You’re a man that went through labor,” Cuddy says. “You have to admit, that’s unheard of. Of course they’re going to be staring at you.”

Of course. It’s one thing for a man to come in to work dressed as a woman. It’s another to have been in labor on the premises of your workplace. No wonder Wilson was on the receiving end of more stares than ever. “I get it,” Wilson says. “But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

Cuddy runs a finger over the rim of her mug. “Well, either we can tell them that you’ve been a cross-dressing woman for years who went more feminine during her pregnancy, or we send out an official memo with the truth. It’s up to you.”

Neither option is palatable. “Great. Either I’m a deviant or a freak of nature.”

When she raises her mug for her next sip, it hides half her face. “Aren’t we all?”

*

Though Wilson has already studied the statistics, Richard’s growth still amazes him. She grows and grows and grows, and, over the weeks, she goes from translucent to blueish. One by one, she starts to be disconnected from the machines, and she grows increasingly fussy.

Wilson worries that she’s uncomfortable and unhappy, and he doesn’t know how to help her with that. He ends up bringing in the children’s books he’d bought during the pregnancy and reading them out loud, in the hopes that it might soothe her.

He’d meant those books for later, when she could appreciate their lush, beautiful drawings, but so few things are turning out as he expected them to that one more miscalculation doesn’t matter.

*

“Are you still feeling unattractive?” his therapist prompts.

“Yes.” Wilson stares at his nails. Perfectly trimmed, they are the one part of him that isn’t ugly.

“And have you tried to think of why?”

Wilson has his theories. “Isn’t it related to the post-partum depression?”

From her pause he knows that’s not the answer she wanted. “The depression is probably making it worse, yes. But it might not be the actual cause.”

He thinks it’s absurd to focus on this, when he has more serious problems, like his inability to connect with Richard. “What do _you_ think it is?”

“You _have_ been through some big changes,” she says.

Wilson thinks, but does not say, how obvious that statement was. Nor does he point out that even with the changes, he’s now back to normal. It shouldn’t be affecting him.

 

*

Wilson makes a point of going to the NICU at least once a day, if not more often. He feels absolutely useless there, a waste of space, but he goes because it’s the right thing to do. Also because he can only imagine the things people would call him, like “dead-beat dad,” if he didn’t. Bad enough he lets the nurses handle all the physical care, like changing diapers and washing.

Sometimes House is already there. Both hands grasping the curve of his cane, House talks about anything and everything. If Wilson is quiet when he enters, he catches snatches of their “conversations”: childhood memories, medical research, misadventures in the supermarket, soap summaries.

Wilson finds solace in how close House is to Richard. He couldn’t have wished for more. He just wishes he could partake in that closeness.

But he may have overestimated the lack of distance between them. One time, House is the one to find Wilson with Richard. “What’re you doing?” House asks, puzzled and maybe alarmed.

Wilson continues to run his fingers over Richard’s back, in the closest thing to a massage she can have, right now. “What? My therapist recommended it. Haven’t you--“ And that’s when Wilson realizes: not once has he seen House touch Richard.

*

“Let me put it this way,” his therapist says. “What do you miss most about being a woman?”

Wilson takes in a sharp breath and tears spring to his eyes, as they sometimes have since the birth. He looks away, doesn’t want to admit it out loud. It’s too embarrassing. All along, he’s known better than to feel this way. He can’t help himself, though.

“Is there any way you can recover it?” she asks, gently.

“No,” Wilson says. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then perhaps you should let yourself grieve.”

*

Wilson doesn’t how to go about grieving, so he does the best he can: he tries to relive the memories one last time.

He’s long since thrown out most of the remnants of his life as a woman; all that’s left is the skin-colored nail polish. But that’s not enough, so he has to splurge on a whole new outfit and set of make-up.

Wilson gets a sense of déjà-vu as he slips on the pantyhose and into the black evening dress; but, looking in the mirror, the result is not at all familiar. The dress stretches where it shouldn’t and bulges everywhere else. Not only is he ugly, but now he looks ridiculous. Like a teenage boy who goes to a party in his grandma’s clothes just for the laughs.

Maybe he needs to complete the transformation, in order to be convincing. He puts on the sandals, several sizes larger than what he wore as a woman, and methodically applies the base, the eye shadow.

But not even after he’s applied the lipstick and pressed his lips together does he look anything less than idiotic. He sinks onto the side of the bathtub and stares at the disaster he is. He could star in a cheap slap-stick comedy. The kind that’s more disturbing than funny.

He has taken off one of the sandals when he hears the door open. “Wilson?”

Oh, god. _Why_ hadn’t he ever made House give back the key?

Wilson is tearing off his other sandal, then his panty hose, as House walks around the apartment. “Wilson? You playing hide-or-seek, or what? I know you’re here, all your lights are on--“

“Bathroom!” He yells, throwing the evidence into a cabinet beneath the sink. “Nature calls all.” What to get rid of next: dress or make-up? Dress is more obvious than make-up, and faster to get rid of, so he goes for that. But the zipper gets caught, and that’s how House finds him, arms converging towards his back trying to get the bottom half of the zipper undone. “...Should’ve known you wouldn’t respect my privacy.”

“Didn’t hear peeing,” House replies, openly gawking, eyes darting up and down Wilson, who lowers his arms and brings them to his front.

“Could’ve been taking a dump,” Wilson says, lamely, his hands intertwining over his abdomen. Maybe he should just keep on stripping, like he’s done nothing out of the usual.

House is still gawking, but more slowly, lingering over Wilson’s torso, his hips. And as House’s jaw goes slightly slack and his eyebrows furrow together, Wilson recognizes that look. In fact, he’s been on the receiving end of that look _many_ times; he just never expected it to happen again.

House wants him.

Wilson doesn’t let himself hesitate; he strides forward and, before House can come up with a comeback that would ruin the moment, he throws his arms around House and presses his lips, hard, against House’s, and then opens his mouth, in invitation. House takes it, groaning.

Wilson has never felt more gorgeous.

Why House would want him now, when he looks like a tragic clown, Wilson doesn’t know. But the knowledge of House’s desire flares him up, and he shudders as House pulls him in, a hand on the small of Wilson’s back, another hand taking hold of his shoulder. “Oh, god, Wilson,” and it sounds-- it sounds _tender_. “I want--“

“Yes,” Wilson encourages, pressing his upper body against House, “ _Yes_.”

“I want,” and House leans his forehead against Wilson’s. Wilson glances down and sees some of his lipstick on House’s lips. It is strange, to be making out with him at eye-level. Wilson used to have to crane his head up, to do this. “I want-- I want too damned much-- are you doing this again?”

“Yes,” Wilson promises. “I’ll do it every day, if that’s what you want--“

House groans again and almost crushes Wilson in a hug, it is so tight. House never hugged him like this, as a woman; was it out of misled consideration, or does House want him more, this way? Wilson hadn’t forgotten House’s reaction to the dildo. Maybe it _is_ about chicks with dicks, then.

Wilson doesn’t mind that; he’ll take what he can get. But there is one problem. For all that House’s desire has heated him up more than since he can remember and for all that he’d wished for this, Wilson isn’t all that aroused.

Still, after many kisses, sighs, and caresses, Wilson too finds release, and they lie entangled on the bed, his dress sticking from the sweat of both their bodies. Wilson feels warm and soft and affectionate. “You’re not really going to dress like that everyday,” House asks, his head right next to Wilson’s.

“No,” Wilson admits. It’s not his thing. “But I can do it once in a while, here.”

“Good,” House says, playing with the hem of the dress, now above Wilson’s hip.

*

All of Wilson’s happiness from the previous day evaporates the moment they reach the hospital. It’s fine and dandy to be a freak when you’re alone with someone who’s into that, but it’s another to be a freak in front of everyone.

And if he walks in with House, everyone will _know_. That he’s in love with another man, that he’s not happy, that he’s worn make-up, that he doesn’t know what to make of his daughter. That he even has a daughter, born of his own body.

It’s not as if anyone at the hospital up to date on their gossip wouldn’t know these things. But he’s scared to remind them by going in with House.

“C’mon,” House says, taking his hand, and Wilson has no choice but to walk through the puddles of melted snow towards the hospital’s front doors.

*

Later that day, Wilson tries to avoid saying what’s on his mind by talking about how spring is coming and his stress at work but then he suddenly blurts out, “I’m not ever going to be normal, am I.”

She smiles. “I am so glad to hear you say that.”

*

The first time Richard squeals in protest at a nurse, waving her miniscule fist, Wilson is overtaken by an unfamiliar feeling. He doesn’t want the nurse, or anyone one else, to wash her. He doesn’t trust them to do so. “Let me,” he says, and gently wipes Richard clean with a washcloth

He does not feel the immense, flooding, unquestionable love he wanted to as a parent, but that’s okay. It’s a start.

Richard squeals harder, but Wilson keeps on washing her.


End file.
